George Ryerson Fowler: Brooklyn's surgical pioneer: a biographical sketch based on historical documents.

The Fowler position, widely used in surgery and obstetrics for patient placement, marks a fraction of 19th-century Brooklyn surgeon George Ryerson Fowler's prodigious accomplishments. Fowler was a pioneer who refined the appendectomy, performed the first lung decortication, advocated for sterile techniques, introduced first aid in the US Army, and helped start a precursor to Annals of Surgery. His publications include the first US textbook on appendicitis--ironically, the disease that killed him.